Located just north of the Loop, the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Bridge is an early example of an overhead counterweight bascule bridge based on the patents of Joseph Baermann Strauss. Strauss was a prominent engineer who later achieved fame as the designer of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. The Chicago & Northwestern Railway Bridge was reported to be the world’s longest and heaviest bridge of its type at the time of its completion. The single-leaf bridge is made from heavily-bolted steel girders and plates whose superstructure consists of a fixed tower and an overhead counterweight comprised of concrete, reinforced with a steel skeleton. The leaf’s axis of rotation, the main trunnion, is located about halfway up the tower and power is provided by a pinion which engages a rack on the operating strut to raise and lower the leaf. Today, the bridge is no longer in service, due to the rerouting of passenger traffic and dwindling freight traffic. It is locked in a raised position creating a massive steel silhouette familiar to residents of the Near North side and commuters on Brown Line and Metra trains.

Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas, Austin

In November 2008, LLILAS celebrated the arrival of a special work of art on campus. The Universidad Veracruzana, one of Mexico’s most prominent universities, presented the institute with a colossal Olmec head, a replica of the iconic sculpture known as San Lorenzo Monument 1, or El Rey.

The original, now housed in the Museo de Antropología in Xalapa, Veracruz, is considered a signature piece of pre-Columbian Olmec culture and a world-class art object that represents New World civilization as emblematically as the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán or the ruins of Machu Picchu. One of seventeen colossal heads still in existence, San Lorenzo Monument 1 was found by noted archaeologist Matthew Stirling in the 1940s. His discoveries, and those of other archaeologists in Mexico during this time, unearthed for the world the culture of the Olmec, an ancient civilization that flourished in southern Mexico 1500-400 BCE and significantly influenced later cultures such as the Maya and Aztec.

The replica that now sits at the entry to LLILAS and the Benson Latin American Collection is made of solid stone and weighs 36,000 pounds. It was sculpted by Ignacio Pérez Solano, a Xalapa-based artist, who has spent his career exploring the history of the Gulf Coast and Mesoamerica. Pérez Solano meticulously reproduced San Lorenzo Monument 1 inch by inch, recreating the powerful lines and imposing features of the original work.

Pérez Solano began creating replicas of Olmec heads under the initiative of Miguel Alemán Velasco, who as governor of Veracruz from 1998 to 2004 endeavored to make Olmec culture better known beyond the borders of Mexico. Reproductions of other colossal heads can be found at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Field Museum in Chicago, among other locations. Miguel Alemán Velasco was present for the dedication ceremony at LLILAS on November 19, 2008, which also featured remarks by UT President William Powers and his counterpart, Raul Arias Lovillo of the Universidad Veracruzana. Fidel Herrera Beltrán, current Governor of Veracruz, also spoke, as did Olmec scholars from the U.S. and Mexico.
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Founded in Chicago in 1878 by a group of investors including John R. True, this company became a major producer of terra cotta trimmings used by the construction industry. By the early 1890s, when Northwestern Terra Cotta employed approximately 500 men, annual sales approached $600,000. By 1910, its large plant at Clybourn and Wrightwood Avenues had about 1,000 workers. The popularity of placing terra cotta moldings on building facades peaked in the 1920s, and Northwestern Terra Cotta led the way, in Chicago and around the country. Around this time, the company opened plants in St. Louis and Denver. Beginning with Louis Sullivan earlier in the century, prominent Chicago architects like Frank Lloyd Wright had extensive contracts with the company. Included among the many landmark Chicago buildings for which Northwestern supplied extensive decorative moldings were the Civic Opera House, the Chicago Theater, the Wrigley Building, and the Randolph Tower. Northwestern’s operations in Chicago declined alongside the construction industry during Great Depression and never returned to their 1920s levels. In 1965, Northwestern Terra Cotta Co.’s only remaining plant, in Denver, closed.